Chapter Text
Two agents strode beneath the warm glow of museum lights encasing its exhibits in luminous ovals. The fresh graduates, one holding a pen eagerly against her notebook, paused their steps by a large, empty display stand. Examining the label, she wrote down, ‘Giant ball of gum gone from 1000 to 0. Sign changed accordingly.’
“Olive, right?” Todd inquired. “Scribbles. We were in training together.”
“Yes… Hello, Todd,” Olive responded, preoccupied.
“Let’s head to Tenth Street.”
She blinked, tearing her focus away from the notes. “Wait, why?”
With a light sigh, Todd began to clarify. He pointed out the pattern of how the ball of gum, like paintings missing from the room, contained a number divisible by ten. Olive nodded, but she was surpassed as she trailed behind his explanation. His leaps between the intertwined numbers outpaced her humiliating crawl.
“Tammy Tenspot lives on ten Tenth Street, and she’s obsessed with numbers in groups of ten. C’mon, we’re taking the tubes.”
During the remainder of their first case, agent Olive continued to watch; she tagged beside Todd as he prevailed. He engaged in an unruffled confrontation with the villain, smoothly securing the stolen items’ return. He shone with wits while a bitter taste of inadequacy crept upon Olive’s tongue. The clenched smile was dragged down her face against her diligent efforts to maintain its upward hold.
As the objects around town were restored, the investigation reached a hurried end. Todd stood unmoving behind the sphere of chewed bubblegum. He was peering down at the corrected sign.
“We should probably get back to headquarters now,” approached Olive.
Her partner made an abrupt turn towards her, silence dawdling between them.
“You don’t like working with me,” he accused.
“What? Why do you say that… Of course I do.”
“I don’t get it. I’m great at this, but no one wants to be my partner.”
“When did I— I do want to be your partner!” Olive spotted doubt in the furrowed space between his eyebrows. “I’m just surprised the case was so quick. I think it’s impressive.”
“Sure.” His arms were crossed firmly.
“You’ve always been the best of the best, Todd,” she muttered, “Anyone would be honored to work with you.”
Todd scoffed and began to walk past her.
“Let’s go,” he said, “The breakroom’s serving pie today.”
Standing by Olive’s seat with a boastful grin, Todd introduced the functions of his invention— a gadget that changed his nose to any desired shape and color. He beamed at her, sporting an elongated, blue nose.
“Neat, right?”
“Todd,” Olive addressed, “You know we’re supposed to fix odd stuff, not make things more odd.”
With a cyan flash, Todd reverted his nose to normal.
“I know that. Doesn’t it get boring, though? Imagine how much fun we could have if we weren’t stuck with fixing.”
“Odd Squad rules say to do no odd. You’re risking your job.”
“Risk?” He chuckled. “Odd squad can’t afford to lose their best agent.”
Olive tapped her finger against her desk, watching him toss the gadget between his hands. Words of disapproval were clawing at her throat but unable to reach articulation.
“They keep me here so I can solve all the cases for them. Don’t you want to move on to something new?”
“Well… You need to be a good agent first to run your own squad.”
“That’s what you want to do?” His previously playful voice sharpened. “Become a Ms. O?”
She made a timid nod. Todd paused, becoming quiet. The gadget stopped its jumps and rested limp on his left palm.
“Huh.” A contemplative glint followed as he sauntered away. Olive hesitantly shuffled back to work.
It had been weeks since Todd was fired. Word about him dwelled in a stagnant and cloudy haze, though speculation circulated. Olive was smothered under the tales about him. The hands that applauded and gilded Todd’s name clasped onto his former partner, suffocating her.
The scattered laboratory contained a rampant array of equipment, flasks of menacing liquids and miscellaneous gadgets placed on every surface. Shelves carried empty test tubes, assorted bottles and jars. A bulky device was held in the hands of a scientist who gave Olive an enthusiastic demonstration. With the push of a button, he projected a ray of light which materialized into a triangle. The gadget was suitably named the ‘triangulator.'
“Thanks, Oscar…” She took the gadget from him and peered at it. “What can I do with this again?”
“What can’t you do with it? You could make—”
An alert blared. Vicious winds charged at the agents, and loose pages of documents made paper cuts through the air. Digits of the warning code spilt out endlessly. Pies were hurled onto walls, smearing them with meringue. The pienado had been released.
Olive and Oscar hurried to take cover underneath a staircase. They scoped the flood of baked goods being propelled from a rampageous machine. Workers sprinted while the pies chased them and coated their suits in filling.
“This is impossible,” shouted Oscar, “The only way to open that thing is with my nose!”
“What?”
Oscar explained; he told her that he always lost his keys, that he shaped the key to the pienado like his nose and that he couldn’t have possibly misplaced his nose. Realization stung Olive. She recalled a gadget that could unlock the pienado— a gadget that could replicate his nose exactly.
“Todd.”
The mechanical doors creaked open at Olive’s exclamation. With a purple copy of Oscar’s nose on his face, Todd grinned at her.
“That’s right,” he said, and he erupted into wild laughter.
The pienado persisted. Ms. O made futile orders to Todd, who disobeyed in recalcitrant theatrics. Though he claimed to have severed his association with the squad, the departed agent was tidily dressed in the uniform. The only dress code flaw in his attire was the missing golden badge from the chest of his jacket.
“Todd, please, stop!” Olive shielded herself with her arms. Mangled pies and flocks of paperwork obscured her glimpses of his illegible scowl.
“You’re the one who should stop, Scribbles! Don’t you see? Odd squad’s g- g- got it all wrong!”
Olive, beneath her hued memories of her brilliant, accomplished partner, spotted Todd and his morphed values.
“They should be making the world more odd, which is exactly what I will do.”
In their partnership, Olive had turned away from his odd indulgences, mumbling hopes of normalcy. When a gust of wind tapped her shoulder and spun her back around, she was met with his thundering villainy. He grinned in the blurry disarray. As Todd abandoned the calamity, Olive failed to reach him. Her lips froze on his name, her fingertips outstretched towards his fading cackle.
Lights from the lab shone upon the storm’s traces in a dim electronic teal. Olive’s trembling grip on the triangulator slipped. The gadget clattered against the floor. Her gaze was fixed in the direction of the pienado, closed with metal triangles.
“Too bad,” she murmured, “I used to like pie.”
She held her breath on the haunting odor of lemon pastry.
After the announcement of Odd Todd’s reappearance, headquarters had sunken into unease. Standard tasks and cases were tackled shakily while his metamorphosed return loomed over the organisation. Precautions had been renewed and activated, but their effect was that of an unfaithful prayer.
The clock hauled its hands in circles. The count of agents speckled across the bullpen diminished gradually until only two were lingering.
Otto’s eyes darted back and forth between his partner and the time shown on his computer. It was nearly nine, much further into the evening than their usual work hours. Olive remained standing behind the security screens, which glowed in the dim, loosely lit bullpen. They reflected a picture of Todd, taken early on in his time as an Odd Squad agent. He was smiling with confidence, and it was different from his crazed, villainous pride. It held less hostility and less direction.
Otto checked the time again. Olive had been stuck in a trance. He could barely locate her after the revelation of her past, until he found her reexamining Todd’s files. She would look up at each slide long enough for the image to leave an impression on her retinas. Otto took in a long breath, rolled his chair back and headed towards her.
“Partner,” he said, “We should get going.”
Olive turned her head down from the screen, facing away from him wordlessly.
“Um,” he began to fumble with his words to fill the icy gap between them. “It’s getting late, we’re the last ones here. And, uh, the tube operators left—”
“You were right.”
He saw her face crinkle with sunken remembrance.
“Todd and I never really worked together.”
Agent Todd had been a prized artwork behind glass, a spectacle out of reach. For every odd delinquency, the picture would contort. Olive had closed her eyes. His face appeared to her to be a little changed every time she’d peek. Once her eyelids were flung open by the pienado, Todd’s image had disappeared from the canvas. Before she could look away with relief, with plans to repaint and forget, Odd Todd tore his way out of the frame.
“Odd Todd,” she corrected herself, “He’s Odd Todd now. He’s out to get us. The best agent Odd Squad ever had, he’s going to take us down.” She was beginning to tremble.
“Look, Olive. We’ve faced so much together, we can—”
“You don’t get it. He’s unmatched, Otto! You have no clue how much danger we’re in!”
There was a flash of bewilderment in her expression, one that Otto had never seen before.
“He and I were never partners. I’m an idiot for ever thinking we were.”
He felt choked by her pessimism. She was alien to him. Olive had always been determined, encouraging, motivational. Otto wrapped his arms around his unrecognizable partner in a frightened effort to find familiarity.
“It’s okay, Olive…”
Olive’s arms stayed stiff by her sides. She wasn’t hugging him back.
Feigning security, he reaffirmed, “It’s going to be okay.”